nities for applying the principle of unity in history teaching as in some other subjects, the teacher can deliberately plan certain unifying exercises. Her lesson plan will usually center around one movement or a certain phase of a movement; she will have all the class read the same presentation of the material upon which her lesson is based; if illustrative source extracts are used, the unifying way is to have a copy for each member of the class- -a less satisfactory but more practicable way is for the teacher or some pupil to read the extract while the class attentively and thoughtfully follows. These are but a few of the ways of applying the principle of unity. The class should understand the necessity of this principle and give its co-operation in applying it.

In applying the principle of proportion, the history teacher has a unique opportunity to teach emphasis and proper perspective. Suppose she plans to spend three weeks in teaching the French Revolution. Before the first lesson is assigned she will have the work for the whole period carefully planned in compliance with the principle of proportion which she wishes to apply. If she desires to test her skill in applying this principle in her daily work, she will ask the pupils to write a resume of the period upon its completion. If she finds her pupils emphasizing the facts and phases which she felt most important when planning and teaching the subject, she may rest assured that some success has been attained in the application of the principle of proportion.

One of the pressing present-day problems in high school history is the application of the principle of proportion to the whole field of history. Until the proper proportion has been settled by general agreement, the individual teacher will have to continue to emphasize particular and general fields of history in her own way and according to her own ideas. The point that seems worth making in this connection is that a history teacher must determine far in advance the essentials of a movement or a period which she plans to teach, and then carefully test her success in applying her principles. She may be wrong in her emphasis, but she is certainly succeeding as long as she is doing what she planned to do.

The principle of coherence is more difficult to apply in a single recitation than either of the foregoing. In order to secure its daily application, the teacher will have to make sure that it is embodied in her plans for a series of lessons. Plans for teaching the Reformation will include a lesson or two on its antecedents. If she gives due regard to the principle of cause and effect in planning and teaching a single lesson, she will at the same time be applying the principle of coherence to both her plan and its presentation; if she consciously works for the application of this principle in her daily work, the pupils will unconsciously apply it in theirs-thus resulting

in papers and recitations which will gladden the heart of the English teacher, who daily wishes for pupils who unconsciously apply what she has so faithfully taught. History, above all other subjects, offers the opportunity for the students to use what they have learned in English; but unless the history teacher deliberately plans for such an application, the efforts of the most painstaking instructor in English will not attain results that will reach far beyond her own class room.

FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES.

There are certain fundamental qualities of a teaching exercise that a history teacher must always keep in mind, if she attains other than mediocre results. These are clearness, force, and fine adaptation. The boy that said a "furlough was a "mule" is a fine example of the need of clearness. This same boy attempted to prove that he was right by citing the picture of a soldier on a mule with the following label below: "Going Home on a Furlough." The need of clearness is brought home to the teacher every time she reads a set of test papers. In these she finds words used incorrectly, facts wrongly applied, and all sorts of historical monstrosities. The history teacher must plan a multitude of schemes to test the clearness of her own and the text-book's presentation of a subject. The very nature of the subject matter makes this imperative. Pupils must be given every possible opportunity to express in their own way what they have gleaned from various sources. It is only by such a method of procedure that a teacher can feel sure that her presentation of the subject contains the quality of clearness.

The qualities of force and fine adaptation are difficult to secure and more difficult to measure. It is certainly worth while for a high school teacher to strive to make her teaching forceful. Many of the unmeasurable results of her work depend upon this quality. Few lasting impressions are ever made by a teacher whose recitations are continuously lacking in it. A dead history recitation is certainly to be avoided. A study so teeming with life must be forcefully presented. By conscious striving an unforceful history teacher may in time acquire considerable skill in injecting force into her recitations.

Fine adaptation is a necessary prerequisite to the two foregoing qualities. If what I am teaching is not adapted to age, interest and capacity of those I am teaching, it will certainly be difficult to make it either clear or forceful. The great problem of adapting history to children in both the elementary and secondary schools is far from a satisfactory solution. It still remains for the individual teacher to take the material outlined in a course of study or a text-book and adapt it to those she is teaching. She can be materially aided in this matter, if both syllabus and text strive to select and discuss only the topics and movement which are adaptable to the pupils for whom they are intended.

CONTROLLING AIMS.

History teachers are often accused of doing indefinite teaching. This criticism has resulted in some wholesome efforts to make their work more definite. This is accomplished by setting up specific aims for a series of lessons or even a single lesson. If a teacher sets out to teach the American Revolution with a very definite aim in mind and tests her results strictly according to this aim, she will escape the criticism of indefiniteness so common and so just nowadays.

Besides the controlling aim that the teacher has in mind in teaching any phase of history, there are certain specific aims common to all recitation. These she will do well to master and follow rather religiously. They are no other than the common ones of testing, teaching and drill. Whatever else she does with the assignment made the day before, the history teacher must certainly test the pupil's preparation of what she has assigned them; and, since knowledge of history and historical movements will always remain one of the legitimate aims of all history teaching, she will need to test the actual knowledge her pupils are acquiring as they proceed along the histori

cal way.

If she is unacquainted with the class, she will need to spend much time in testing methods of study, since it is only by this means that she can be able to locate improper methods and supplant them with proper ones. In this testing period of the recitation she should be able to diagnose the cause of both general and individual failures. She can also test her own skill in applying the principles and qualities advocated above. Such a test will often bring disappointments, but will in the end work for the good of all concerned.

The history teacher's real skill is best seen in how well she is able to do the second general aim or purpose of the recitation listed above. In the teaching phase of the class exercise she finds an opportunity to do what in reality she is paid to do. To teach does not necessarily mean to do all the reciting. This may be advisable occasionally, but not often. Among other things, high school history teaching means giving the pupils opportunities to express themselves concerning things they have read, correcting wrong impressions wherever they exist, helping pupils master and organize related historical facts, giving additional information which the teacher has acquired through reading and travel, having at hand at the opportune time illustrative materials to make abstract and general statements concrete and full of meaning, developing certain principles underlying history study, and inspiring pupils to better efforts not only in history, but in all phases of their work both in and out of school.

In spite of the fact that she runs the risk of being dry and formal, the history teacher must spend some time in actual drill work. Before this can be profitably done she will need to have definitely in mind the phases of the work which she hopes to make automatic. Too much is often attempted along this line with the accompanying results of permanently ac

complishing little or nothing. Certain dates must be forever learned; certain men must become very familiar; certain maps must be produced from memory; certain large movements must be known and remembered in a connected story. For example, the writer when teaching United States history in the high school used to drill his pupils until they could give the date of the admission of each State into the Union. This might not have been worth doing, yet at the same time it certainly had the virtue of definiteness, and gave the high school graduate some knowledge which was of little burden, and, as the teacher believed, some use.

STANDARDS FOR JUDGING.

It is unfortunate for any subject during these days of so much scientific measuring that it has no definite criteria for testing results. History is woefully lacking in any objective standards for testing the efficiency of the instruction therein; and the individual history recitation is more woefully lacking in this particular than the subject itself. Professor McMurray in his examination of the character of the instruction in the New York City schools rather arbitrarily proposed four standards for judging the efficiency of a recitation in any given subject. According to these proposals a recitation was good in the degree that it offered the pupils the opportunity for motivation, evaluation, initiation and organization.1 If any given history recitation offered ample occasions for the application of these four standards. it was an efficient one. More recently, Mr. Williams, of Indiana University, has proposed certain standards which were constructed with history especially in mind. For a recitation in history to be efficient, according to Mr. Williams, it must offer abundant opportunity for the students to do concrete and objective thinking, apply historic truth to social situations, analyze and interpret historical phenomena, and use historical judgment.2 Mr. L. E. Taft, who has made some little study of the recitation as a factor in producing social efficiency, says that a good recitation whether in history or what not should involve the following: a definite and social aim, knowledge of how to study, a great amount of pupilactivity, much responsibility and independence on the part of the pupils, a searching consideration of values, free conversation and exchange of ideas, a critical attitude on the part of the pupil, a permanent increase in the pupils' knowledge, much thinking and judging on the part of the pupils, and finally, much opportunity to acquire and apply a knowledge of the use of books. All these proposals are good beginnings on the solution of a difficult problem, but nothing more. We are much in need of some standards of value based upon scientific investigation rather than mere opinion.

3

1" Elementary School Standards." p. 3.

2" Standards for Judging History Instruction,” in HisTORY TEACHER'S MAGAZINE, VI, 235 ff.

3" The Recitation as a Factor in Producing Social Efficiency," in "Education," XXXIV, 145 ff.

CONDITIONS NECESSARY.

Before a teacher can expect to meet any standards whatsoever for judging her history instruction, she must surround herself and the class with conditions necessary to a good recitation in history. Sometimes this is in her power and sometimes it is not. Professor Betts, in his little monograph on "The Recitation," suggests the following conditions necessary to a good recitation in any subject: freedom from distractions by the teacher, the pupils, and the outside world; interest and enthusiasm on the part of teacher and pupils; carefully planned work on the part of the teacher and carefully prepared work on the part of the pupils; high standards; a spirit of co-operation and sympathy; and pupils surrounded with suitable material equipment. All these are. both desirable and necessary, and most of them are under the direct control of the teacher. The two exceptions are distractions from the outside world and material equipment. To attain the first of these, State regulations sometimes come to her assistance, but if she gets what is due her subject in the line of maps, charts, pictures, bulletins, books, diagrams, models and magazines, she will often need to use all the persuasive powers at her command to convince superintendents and school boards that she deserves a laboratory for her subject just as much as the physics, chemistry, manual training and domestic science teachers do for theirs; and that, to do anything above mediocre work, she must have her share of the money which is now being spent on equipping laboratories, manual training departments, and cooking establishments in the high school.

MANAGEMENT.

"The

The ordinary principles of "scientific management are certainly as applicable to a high school history recitation as to the management of a farm, a shop, a store, or a household. Professor Bobbitt, in discussing the application of some principles of scientific management to the problem of city-school systems, mentions among others the following principle as especially applicable to city schools. worker must be kept supplied with detailed instruction as to the work to be done, the standards to be reached, the methods to be employed, and the appliances to be used." 5 If one substitutes the word student" for the word "worker in this quotation, one has an excellent principle of guidance for the high school history teacher. high school history teacher. When students are kept supplied with definite instructions as to the work to be done, the standards to be reached, the methods to be employed, and the materials to be used, they will work with a definiteness hitherto unknown. Recitation standards must be well understood by all concerned; the general method of procedure must be no secret of the teacher's; the direction for preparing "The Recitation," 81 ff.

"Some General Principles of Management Applied to the Problems of City-School Systems," in 12th Year Book of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, 89.